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Feb. 7, 2017 - Skeptoid
17:13
Skeptoid #557: Who Were the Berserkers?

These mighty Norse warriors fought with a frenzy that seems all but inexplicable. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
The True Nature of Berserking 00:10:17
The Norse Berserkers have such an air of mystery and romanticism around them.
Who were they and exactly what happened to them when they went into the alleged frenzy that made them practically undefeatable in combat?
Well, first we have to start with the basics.
What is the evidence that says berserkers ever even existed?
Once we have that, then we can start with the theorizing.
And we're doing it today on Skeptoid.
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Who were the Berserkers?
For centuries, the Norse Berserker warriors have been regarded with a sort of mystique.
They were said to fight like crazed animals, out of their minds, fearless, contemptuous of friend or foe, virtually undefeatable in combat.
We get our modern English word berserk from them, meaning violently or destructively frenzied, wild, crazed, deranged.
A whole mythology has arisen surrounding the berserkers.
Who were they?
What was the true nature of their berserking?
What was the source of their ability?
Today we're going to don iron helmets and cast ourselves into the abyss of battle and encounter the real berserkers.
Theories abound about how the berserkers got so berserk.
Did they simply get really drunk before going into battle?
Was it some kind of trance?
One of the more popular explanations is that they took a form of hallucinogenic mushroom.
But before we look into the theoretical, let's look at the factual.
What do we actually know about the Berserkers and how do we know it?
The Berserkers are known from their numerous mentions and descriptions in the sagas, the epic stories of Vikings written in Old Norse, primarily in the 10th through the 14th centuries.
The word comes from bear cirker, usually interpreted to mean bear shirt, as in wearing a bearskin for a shirt.
Less popular interpretations have been no shirt or animal skin, basically meaning no armor.
Regardless, the net result is the same, berserkers were generally described as wearing no armor or mail coats and wearing the head or pelt of a bear, wolf, or boar either on their head directly or on a helmet.
Such costumes have long been used as a battle strategy to invoke terror.
And indeed, the most famous appearance of berserkers in the sagas was as shock troops employed by King Harold Fairhair, the first king of Norway, circa the year 900.
The Berserker's association with animal pelts has led some of the mythology astray into comparisons with shapeshifters, such as werewolves or skinwalkers.
And that's not really what they were, because they were real Vikings, and those things are not things.
Author Richard John King, writing in an 1850 edition of the literary journal Notes and Queries, summarized the Danish report of the controversial Viking scholar Grimer Jonson Thorkelen.
Thorkelin, in his essay on the Berserker, appended to his edition of the Krisny Saga, tells us that an old name of the Berserk Frenzy was Hamremi, i.e., strength acquired from another or strange body, because it was anciently believed that the persons who are liable to this frenzy were mysteriously endowed during its accesses with a strange body of unearthly strength.
If, however, the berserk was called on by his own name, he lost his mysterious form, and his ordinary strength alone remained.
It is clear, therefore, continues Thorkelin, that the state of men laboring under the berserk frenzy was held by some at least to resemble that of those who, whilst their own body lay at home apparently dead or asleep, wandered under other forms into distant places and countries.
Such wanderings were called homfar by the old Northmen and were held to be only capable of performance by those who had attained the very utmost skill in magic.
And such is the direction taken by much 19th and 20th century research on the berserkers.
I'm not going to follow that thread today, but it's out there if you want to pursue it independently.
There's a somewhat interesting history of how the berserkers may have informed modern folklore about shapeshifters and associated magic.
It's their actual abilities in nature that we're going to focus on today.
The so-called frenzy or rage into which a berserker would go was called berserker gung.
Snorri Sturluson, a prominent author of the sagas, described it thus.
Men rushed forwards without armor, were as mad as dogs or wolves, bit their shields, and were strong as bears or wild bulls, and killed people at a blow, but neither fire nor iron told upon themselves.
These were called berserker.
How could ordinary men become so supernaturally vicious?
Most modern explanations for berserker gung invoke the hallucinogenic fly-agaric mushroom, Amanita muscaria.
I find this a poor theory for three reasons.
First, with all the discussion of berserker gung in the sagas, there is never once a mention of eating or drinking anything to trigger it.
It just happens spontaneously.
Second, there are analogs for berserker gung in many cultures around the world, and no mushrooms or anything else are needed to trigger those either.
It's called amok syndrome in Malay and Indonesian cultures, giving us our word amok.
It's mal de palea in Puerto Rico, greasy sickness in Central America, and simply the fits in India.
Even the Inuit have something called pibloktok, thought to be triggered by the stress of the long winter nights.
No mushrooms are available on the ice.
And third, the mushroom theory is very poorly sourced.
It was suggested by the Swedish theologian Samuel Odman in 1784, based on stories about Siberian shamans using it for visions.
There was never anything to connect the mushrooms to the Vikings or to any behavior similar to Berserker Gung.
It is a theory devoid of evidence or plausibility, yet it remains the most often repeated.
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One interesting theory meshes relatively well with modern psychology.
Being in medieval battles was probably a pretty horrifying experience and likely to take a psychological toll on those who witnessed things like this from Egle's saga.
He wielded his axe and struck Halvard right through his helmet and head.
Then he tugged it back with such force that he swung Halvard up into the air and slung him over the side.
Consider this minor episode in the same story where Eagle was playing a game with his friend Thord and father Scalagrim.
PTSD and Medieval Battle Trauma 00:04:56
With no provocation, Scalagrim was seized with such strength that he seized Thord and dashed him to the ground so fiercely that he was crushed by the blow and died on the spot.
Then he seized Aegel and would have killed him too, but for the interference of a servant woman, whom he killed instead by throwing a boulder at her.
Considering Scalagrim's history of hand-to-hand combat forced upon him by his station in life, a psychologist today wouldn't even have to think twice to say post-traumatic stress disorder.
Scalagrim's violence against his family and friends, for no reason, is a classic dissociative reaction, beyond his control, triggered by something in the play.
In 1956, Howard Fabing described the Berserker Gung in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
Men who were thus seized performed things which otherwise seemed impossible for human power.
This condition is said to have begun with shivering, chattering of the teeth, and chill in the body, and then the face swelled and changed its color.
With this was connected a great hot-headedness, which at last gave over into a great rage, under which they howled as wild animals, bit the edge of their shields, and cut down everything they met without discriminating between friend or foe.
When this condition ceased, a great dulling of the mind and feebleness followed, which could last for one or several days.
PTSD had not yet been described in 1956, but what Fabing described is a nearly textbook example of what we would now recognize as a severe PTSD episode.
It can begin with an almost seizure-like dissociated state of consciousness, followed by reckless behavior that can be violent and self-destructive, and afterwards, a period of deep depression.
Another important clue is Fabing's mention that berserkers did not seem to know friend from foe.
This is found in a number of places in the sagas, and so evidently was a common feature of the mania.
During a dissociative episode, the person often does not know where they are, or recognize people, or retain any memory of the episode.
It is a key piece of evidence that PTSD is indeed a likely cause of what history has termed a berserker gong.
During a severe PTSD episode, the body goes into hyper-arousal, also called the acute stress response, or fight-or-flight.
Adrenaline is dumped into the bloodstream.
This is how I described it in our episode about superhuman strength during a crisis.
Your airways relax to maximize breathing capacity and metabolism increases.
Your muscles go into glycolysis, which produces energy-rich molecules, fueling them for extraordinary action.
While blood flow to the muscles is increased, blood flow to vulnerable extremities is decreased.
Dopamine is produced in the brain as a natural painkiller.
Peripheral vision turns into tunnel vision to minimize distractions.
Reflexes and reaction times improve.
Non-critical functions like digestion and sexual function slow or even stop.
It is the complete set of skills a warrior in berserker gong needs.
It's what one needs to throw Halvard overboard by the axe buried in his head.
It's what one needs to fight a battle with an apparent imperviousness to injury and pain.
Saga historians have noted that being a berserker and the act of berserker gong are two different things.
In the sagas, the act of berserker gang is mentioned more often, and usually in different places, than are actual berserkers.
We might interpret this to mean that going berserk is something that was well known, which, if we accept the theory that PTSD was involved, would certainly be the case in a culture that was so frequently engaged in violent combat.
We might further hypothesize that, in recognition of the fact that this seemed to happen a lot to many warriors, certain of them became anointed as berserkers and regarded as specially talented.
It is not an unreasonable conclusion for a pre-scientific society to reach.
And once you have a subclass of warriors with a special name known for a special ability identified by bearskins, there you have a springboard for all the shapeshifter mythology that followed.
Again, not a horrible interpretation by pre-scientific people struggling to explain how men could suddenly act so differently.
Could it be that the mighty berserkers of Viking sagas were nothing more or less than ordinary men suffering from a very real psychological disorder?
The evidence does indeed seem to fit.
Skepticism as the Best Medicine 00:01:56
Each box is checked all the way down the list.
The life of a warrior armed with horrible weapons like axes and longswords could not have been a very happy one.
And it could just be that the berserkers were merely those who felt it most keenly.
Might they have been more deserving of our sympathy than of our fear?
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